A computing device is a hardware device that is able to process instructions. For example, a computing device may be a personal computer, a server, a server farm, workstation, or any other such device. Occasionally, computing devices fail. In particular, one or more components of the computing device may cease to function properly. For example, the component may stop functioning as a result of overheating or the software or hardware within the computing device may fail.
One type of computing device that may fail is a server. Failure of a server is particularly disruptive because of the productivity loss and potential data loss caused by the failed server. Because servers can fail, servers often include a system controller to manage the server.
The system controller is a component of the server that can control components of the server. Additionally, the system controller provides an administrator with system messages about the state of the components of the server. When a fault occurs, the system messages may be used to recover from the fault. In particular, the system messages may be used to identify the conditions of the components of the server that resulted in fault. Because the system controller is a part of the server, when the server suffers a power fault, the system controller is often affected. Thus, the system messages are typically offloaded from the system controller onto a console logger or a network connected loghost.
While the system controller is providing the system messages, a console logger, which is simply a monitor, displays the system messages. If the user viewed the system messages before the system messages scrolled off-screen, the user may prevent the server from failing or recover the server after the server failed.
Another method for capturing system messages is to store the system messages on a network connected loghost. A network connected loghost is a server or workstation on the customer's network that stores the system messages. After the server is installed in the physical site (i.e., at a consumer's site), the network address of the network connected loghost is identified. Using the network address, the system controller in the server is configured to send messages to the network connected loghost. When fault occurs, a network administrator with root access to the network connected loghost is contacted. The network administrator provides credentials to the network connected loghost to retrieve the system messages and recover the server.